JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A group of local pastors will meet Wednesday to discuss their plan to fight the outbreak of crime in Jacksonville..
This meeting comes a day after Sheriff John Rutherford unveiled a new operation to curb violence in the city.
Sheriff Rutherford and some of the black community pastors who have already spoken out against about the gang-fueled violent crime in parts of Jacksonville announced Tuesday a joint initiative to fight back. Rutherford called the effort "Operation PIE," which stands for prevention, intervention and enforcement.
Rutherford said they have identified the top 50 prolific offenders and the top 50 at-risk youth in the community, and they will be working on both ends of the spectrum.
"We have a message, we have the messengers and we're continuing to develop methods," Rutherford said. "However, we have reached out to the pastors, because one of the things we know about fighting violent crime in our community is we have to attack the culture of violence and drugs in our community."
Rutherford said police started tracking 1,000 at-risk young people in the targeted communities between ages 10 and 15 in 2005. They found that by 2009:
- 763 had been arrested more than once
- 96 were in jail
- 127 were in state prison
- 14 were dead
Rutherford said officers and pastors will work together with families of the identified at-risk young people.
"We are very serious about changing those numbers we just heard," said Bishop John Guns, founder of Operation Save Our Sons. "We believe very strongly that in order for our communities to be transformed, and for our young men and young women to be saved in every conceivable way, the partnership between churches, between government, between JSO, between the school district, must occur."
Last week, several pastors introduced a seven-point plan to curb crime in the city, and one of the pastors involved in that plan offered his take on Operation PIE.
Pastor Mark Griffin of Wayman Ministries said he agreed with the sheriff's approach that mentorships and partnerships must come before arrests.
He said pastors will serve as the catalyst to families who have at-risk youth in need of guidance.
"The reality of it is most of these young men committing crimes, they don't come to our house of worship, so we don't know them," Griffin said. "We might share the same skin color, but beyond that we are as boring to many of them as the sheriff or armed forces man. But I think what it does is it sends a signal to the entire community that we're trying to do something. If it helps one young man, then it's worth it."
Griffin said the pastors who developed the seven-point plan will be meeting Wednesday to discuss the sheriff's announcement, along with their plan. They will be choosing the dates they plan to take their plan to the streets.
The first community meeting of Operation PIE will be held at 6:30 p.m. May 28 at Abysennia Baptist Church at 10325 Interstate Center Drive.
"The message is, 'We love you. Your life is valuable, and we want you to be successful,'" Rutherford said. "No. 2, we want you out of that drug culture. We want you out of the violence culture, and the pastors are going to deliver that message."
Operation PIE will run in conjunction with Operation Ceasefire, which brought increased community policing in targeted areas of Northwest Jacksonville.
The sheriff said, so far, officers have knocked on 4,000 doors and talked to over 1,600 people about crime in the targeted area.
Last spring, Operation Ceasefire was implemented for a few months to bring down the crime rate.
Over the 30-day period between April and May 2014, the number of murder and shooting victims in the Ceasefire target area dropped by 50 percent, and the number of cases where shots were fired dropped more than 60 percent.